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Nokia yesterday launched a trio of handsets, including its latest bid to win business from Apple's iPod and other music players with its a colourful music-friendly handset. It also took aim at the mid-range 3G arena with a clamshell-format 3G smart phone.

The Nokia 6290 runs Nokia's S60 user interface on top of the Symbian operating system to deliver the usual array of features you'd expect from a Nokia smart phone: personal information management, web browsing, email with PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint attachment viewing, and so on.

Nokia's 6086 (left) and 6290

The clamshell opens to reveal a 2.2in, 240 x 320, 16m-colour display and a basic camera for video calling. Round the back is two megapixel main camera with 4x digital zoom. Nokia claimed the handset delivers up to 3.5 hours' talk time and up to ten days' operation in stand-by mode.

Nokia also unveiled the 6086 camera phone, though its picture taking is limited to a VGA - 300,000-pixel - camera with 4x digital zoom. In its favour, the 6086 has a quad-band GSM radio and supports UMA - in other words, it has Wi-Fi on board so it's ready for network-sanctioned VoIP services.

Nokia claimed the 6086 will let you talk for up to five hours and run for ten days on stand-by.

The Nokia 2626 is a budget music phone - it'll retail for a mere €75 ($99/£51) before network subsidies, Nokia said - that will ship in a variety of bright colours and has an on-board FM radio. The price suggests the spec will be basic, and indeed it is: dual-band GSM/GPRS and a 128 x 128, 65,536-colour display. The battery will provide up to three hours' talk time but a whopping 12 days on stand-by.

The 6290 and 6086 are due to ship in Q1 2007 for around €325 ($428/£220) and €200 ($263/£135), respectively. Nokia didn't say when the 2626 will ship. ®